And Nothing Can We Call Our Own
by rabidsamfan
Summary: A sequel to "Call for the Doctor" set during the hiatus.


Title: And Nothing Can We Call Our Own  
Author: rabidsamfan  
Rating: pg  
Character(s): Alfie, Watson  
Summary: A hiatus fic to follow after the events of Call for the Doctor.  
Warnings: Canonical character death, grief  
Word Count: 1500  
Author's Notes: Alfie was lent to me by KCS for "Call" and she graciously allowed him to narrate this story as well, but please note that I am not the final arbitrator of his fate! Thanks also to janeturenne, who kindly betaed and found the quote for the title.

Written for challenge 14 at the Watson's Woes community on LJ.

* * *

I shoulda knowed the minute I saw him get off the train.

To tell the truth I shoulda knowed before that, but when the doctor's telegram came, saying he'd be on the evening train, me and his missus was both so glad to get word we didn't stop to wonder why he'd barely used enough words to spit at. We just got Miss Myfanwy's dog-cart out and headed down from the village to meet him, because he'd get to Cardiff too late to catch the local up to Taff's Well, and it ain't even seven miles, and the whole way down I was happy-like because Missus Watson she let me drive, and because Cardiff is almost a proper city like London, and because I had so much to tell the doctor, and Mister Holmes too, even though the telegram hadn't said a peep about him.

But when the train pulled in and the passengers got off, Doctor Watson he was all alone.

There's a way a toff holds himself when he hurts, like he's made out of bones and plaster, and his face all stiff like he's hoping no one'll look past it to the pain in his eyes. I seen the doctor get like that plenty of times when the weather was bad, because he got shot a long time ago, but this time the sun had been shining all day and it was as warm as it had been for weeks, so it had to be something inside him that hurt and not the bullet neither. Made me want to start crying just too look at him, and scared to ask him why. Missus Watson, she just passed me a coin and told me to go buy a bottle of something to put the color back into his face and then go back to the pony.

I mean, it ain't like I didn't have any clues before that. Before that telegram we hadn't heard nothin' for a week or more. Missus Watson didn't even get the letters that weren't letters but just pieces out of newspapers from places where she hadn't never been and some of the letters with pinpricks beside them, that she could read but didn't tell me how. I'd kinda figured something had gone wrong when the letters stopped, but I'd been too busy telling Missus Watson all the reasons why she oughtn't worry to get too worried meself. I mean, the doctor and Mister Holmes, they've had lots of adventures, and come up roses every time. In the end, I mean. It ain't that they didn't never get hurt, but...

Anyways, when I got back with the bottle, they were sitting in the dog-cart, and she was crying and he had his arm around her and was telling her it was all right in a voice like he didn't half believe himself, and that was when I saw the twist of black around his sleeve and knew for certain that Mister Holmes was dead.

* * *

London wasn't hardly like London no more with Mister Holmes dead and Jim Wiggins at sea and most of the other kids what had done errands for him like me off in that school. There weren't no reason for them to stay gone, neither, far as I could see. The police hadn't been able to prove nothin' certain about the Professor, not without Mr. Holmes, but they'd managed to get most of the men what had done the dirty work locked away, even that lawyer what had tried to get Doctor Watson sent to prison. I tried to get the little'uns that were still there to help me keep an eye out for trouble, but truth is they thought it was just a game, and mostly had better ways to keep their bellies full, so pretty soon it was only me. If it hadn't been for being too busy helping Doctor Watson with his stories about Mister Holmes and helping his missus with the house and keeping the boots and the brass all polished up nice and taking care of Gran I'd have been lonely.

Gran missed Miss Myfanwy and she missed that hot springs in Wales too, because it had took the aches out of her bones when she'd gone to soak in it. Miss Myfanwy missed her the same way, because she wrote and invited Missus Watson and Gran back and me too the second winter if I'd behave myself. But I didn't want to go because my reading had finally got good enough that Doctor Watson had told me I could read any of his books and I had just found Robert Louis Stevenson and I didn't want to finish one story and not have the next one there to pick up, and besides Missus Watson wanted me to take care of _him_, so I stayed in London.

Just as well as it turned out, except it didn't turn out well, because when the Doctor and me were standing at the station waitin' for the train to come in from Cardiff all of a sudden the stationmaster and the guards were coming along the platform a-telling everyone waitin' for that train to come along to the Ladies' Waiting Room, even the gentlemen, and I think I just about broke the bones in the doctor's hand because I knew it wasn't going to be a good reason why.

* * *

Gran's burying money didn't go far enough to have her set alongside her husband, and there weren't no way to tell where exactly my mum was because there hadn't been no money at all that season and the parish had done the honors, so Doctor Watson he had her laid alongside his Missus like they'd been found and that way we didn't have to listen to the parson but once. I was glad of that, because my head hurt all that week from thinking too much, and from crying whenever I could find a quiet place to crawl away.

The doctor, he didn't cry, not even at the funeral. He just got quieter, and solemner, and kinder. I asked him once why not and he said he'd run dry of tears sober too many funerals ago. "And there's work to be done," he said, and there was, what will all the scarlet fever around, but I found some of the brandy he likes and left it on his desk three nights running, until I lay in my bed listening to him wailing like a lost soul and smashing things for the sound of the world breaking.

Next day I helped him bandage the cuts on his hand, and he thanked me for the bottle and said it had done him good, but he'd gone all back inside himself again. Then he told me he was selling the practice, moving away from the memories.

"Fine," I says to him. "It ain't like you need so big a house no more, and we probably won't even need a maid too, 'cause I can do the cleaning." But he caught me by the shoulder and made me sit.

"Alfie," he said, like there weren't nothing to discuss. "I'm sending you away to school."

* * *

"I don't see why I have to go," I told him again when I looking at myself all dressed like a toff in the tailor's mirror. "I'd much rather stay here in London with you."

"You're clever enough to appreciate a decent education," he said, turning my collar around to where it didn't poke so much. "Think of all the Latin you've picked up, just from helping me keep my books in order."

"What good is a dead... a language no one speaks anymore." I wanted to hang onto his arm, but he was holding himself so proper I wasn't sure what he'd do if I did.

"You'll like school," he said, and his hand rested a moment all warm on my shoulder. "And you'll like being with your friends again. I remember how close you boys all were, like brothers."

"But you'll need my help. Especially now, with the new surgery and all."

"I can't afford to pay you."

"I don't need to get paid."

"You need to get fed," he almost smiled. "The way you're growing..." But then he shook his head and looked away like he couldn't stand to see my eyes. "And besides, I promised Holmes."

* * *

I thought about running away, but truth is, I'd got used to a warm bed and a full belly. And where would I run to? But I didn't stop being angry with him until the night before the train, when I found him turning the pages of the photograph album he keeps locked away and I saw how all of the pictures in it were framed in black. That's when I understood.

I guess when two people are as good at losing everyone they ever loved as me and the doctor are, we'd best not love no one at all.


End file.
